Status would deepen homes’ history
Residents of West Ninth Avenue on Spokane’s South Hill are banding together to preserve the architectural history of four residences built in the early 1900s for one of the city’s most beloved and generous families.
They are seeking to form a local historic district to ensure that their block-long row of Tudor Revival homes between Madison and Jefferson streets will be maintained in the future.
The four houses were built at different times for James and Elizabeth Comstock and their daughter Josie Comstock Shadle and son-in-law Eugene Shadle, of The Crescent department store fortune.
“The whole Comstock-Shadle contribution to Spokane is huge,” said Linda Yeomans, a historic preservation consultant who wrote the nomination for the district.
If approved by the City Council in coming weeks, the Comstock-Shadle Spokane Register Historic District would be only the second local residential district on the Spokane Register of Historic Places.
The homes are part of the Ninth Avenue National Historic District, but the local register designation would provide additional historic recognition as well as property tax breaks for qualified restorations.
The Spokane City/County Historic Landmarks Commission unanimously approved the nomination last week after hearing from several of the property owners.
“To have them all together as a group is very special,” said Commissioner Brian Poirier. “It’s great to see we have four property owners who are interested in restoring these (homes).”
The city’s other local register district, formed in 1992, is at Corbin Park with 83 historic buildings.
Most homeowners seek individual listings on the local register rather than forming a district.
The oldest of the Comstock-Shadle houses was built for James and Elizabeth Comstock at 1128 W. Ninth Ave. in 1905.
It was converted to apartments in 1929 and is now owned by Jim Lee and Ron McCleary of Spokane.
The adjacent home at 1118 W. Ninth Ave. was built in 1906 and given as a delayed wedding gift to the Comstocks’ daughter, Josie, after she married Eugene Shadle. The home is owned by Anupam Narayan and Judith G. Sugg.
In 1910, the Comstocks moved into a new home built at the opposite end of the block at 1106 W. Ninth. Comstock used the home at 1128 W. Ninth as part of a trade to acquire property adjacent to the Northern Pacific rail line downtown.
In 1911, the Shadles also moved into a new house at 1112 W. Ninth, which was adjacent to the Comstocks’ newer house at 1106 W. Ninth.
Josie Comstock Shadle had met her future husband while living with her parents in Algona, Iowa. Shadle worked in Comstock’s dry goods store there, and followed him to Spokane, where he eventually became president and general manager of The Crescent department store.
The nomination report for the local district relies heavily on research taken from old news articles detailing the philanthropy of the Comstock and Shadle family.
After James Comstock’s death in 1918, Josie Comstock Shadle and her husband continued Comstock’s generosity. They built and donated Comstock Park and pool to the city in honor of James Comstock; financed and built part of St. Luke’s Hospital; developed Shadle Park on the North Side; and gave more than $100,000 to improve Spokane parks and parkways, according to the nomination, which was written by Yeomans.
Josie and Eugene Shadle moved in with Elizabeth Comstock in 1921 to care for her. Elizabeth Comstock died in 1934.
Before Eugene Shadle’s death in 1944, the Shadles formed the Comstock Foundation, which donated more than $31.5 million in Spokane before it was dissolved in 2000, according to the nomination.
Josie Comstock Shadle died in 1954.
James Comstock was born in New York in 1838 and moved to Wisconsin in 1848, where he served in the First Wisconsin Cavalry during the Civil War, according to the nomination.
He moved to Spokane from Iowa in 1889. His first store in Spokane survived the great fire that year and his success resulted in his move to what is now The Crescent Building at Riverside and Wall. Comstock named the business the Spokane Dry Goods Co., and called the store The Crescent, the nomination says.
Patty and Gerry Dicker, the current owners at 1106 W. Ninth, are converting that house to a single-family residence, which they plan to occupy. It had been divided into apartments in the late 1950s.
The original interior woodwork is largely intact, as well as oak floors, staircases and fireplace. The Dickers are restoring a front-facing solarium, butler’s pantry and front entry steps. They also plan to restore the original layout of the kitchen, which was moved apparently as part of the apartment conversion.
“They carved this poor thing up and it didn’t deserve that,” said Patty Dicker. She said the effort to form a local historic district has “probably made us closer as neighbors.”